Tenso address is handy for pre-orders that are very limited. Otherwise you can just do a custom request to FJ and they will work it out (but it takes a bit of time).
Oh wow, I wasn’t aware you could just collect stuff you shipped to the Tenso address!. I’m aware FJ let’s you ship domestically for an extra fee, but you have to do a custom request for that.
The table on this thread is outdated, at least I can tell for FJ.
Fee is 500JPY not 300JPY. Storage is 60d not 45d.
yeah all they are is a warehouse / forwarder…
so I ended up shipping back several large boxes… from all over Japan just aggregated things and takkubined to my tenso address from the hotels every few days as stuff accumulated. It’s not cheap but it did allow me to kind of shop w/o worrying about space and whatnot. Made it super easy not having to carry things around.
The only thing to be wary of is stuff you cannot ship via EMS, so many silly restrictions…but scented oils are one. 99% of everything I picked up was gifts/omiyage (should have got more for myself - but I did get some glassware in Otaru and some cookies from Beppu).
I had picked up this very small cute small room oil diffuser thing… and they were like we cannot ship this to the US (silly but rules…so ok fine). Thankfully it was early enough in my trip and they coordinated to send it to me at one of the first hotels the day I flew to Hokkaido. Of course I had to pay for it to be sent back but it was super easy and didn’t want to throw it away.
Not sure how it is now, haven’t used them in a long time, but basically you should be able to order from anywhere in Japan that ships domestically and they will (so long as they can) forward it to you … aside from it not being cheap I was generally happy with them.
I even used them for some random online orders that didn’t ship internationally for some books. You can buy from (assuming you can check out) anywhere in Japan that ships locally and they will count and verify items for you (usually it’s kind of halfway done…on the first pass). I got one order a full set of books (and the counts were wrong) and I explained the order and asked them to confirm the books, totals and that everything was there. They took pictures and emailed them to me and fixed the total items.
Tenso is great (or was…will find out next Japan trip).
Ah right that’s the current use case. It’s for THIRDLESS - which is a new (and the first afaik) yuri industry magazine to release (not counting that Eureka issue, since it was a one off thing).
One thing I hadn’t accounted for is needing to declare the type & value of the item in their dashboard, after it arrives at their warehouse
Throwing in 閉じた国のホロン as well, and gonna try to find a set or two of Mercari (surugaya.jp Amazon JP since the other two required a JP phone number) and then watch my wallet weep at 
will be interesting to see how package consolidation affects the shipping price
for tenso never worried too much about this. Because there were so many random omiyage and at the time in 2022 we had an blanket $800 exemption
so I would just guestimate
I wasn’t spending near that much anyway
even if it wasn’t perfect it was well under the exemption anyway
99% was gifts anyway and meh t-shirts, books, cookies, fridge magnets…rounding was close enough at the time.
Depending on which country it’s shipping to and whatever rules are in place, suppose this could be annoying and might need to look at the receipts.
I’ve seen people mention them every now and then so I tried using one of surugaya’s free shipping campaigns. Got the remaining volumes of konosuba, various yuri light novels, two yuri uma musume doujinshi, and a 特典 short story thing
Oh nice, you got the limited runs of vol 9 and 12. I’m missing the 9th. I’ll look around if I find it in mercari or yahoo
no tenso required… made a little visit to bookoff today … and a few other places
spent the afternoon shopping instead of reading…but found a physical of 24目 and was surprised to see bookclub book (have the digital but figured why not)
still need to pick up frieren 15…
For folks who’ve used Tenso: what do you put the item value as? The amount you paid? Or the suggested retail price? Ex: I paid 850円 for ソードアート・オンライン プログレッシブ | L35 1-8 set, but the retail value of these new on Amazon is 8313円 (which I assume is based on their combined suggested retail price)…
I put the 850円 in, but just wanted to make sure that’s not gonna mess with customs or some nonsense. I mean I think that’s basically what any used store would have done if they were shipping anyway.
Always what you paid. You have the receipt/email of what you paid too, so they can’t complain there.
I often buy sets of books at cheap and they go through customs with very little VAT due to the price I paid.
It goes both ways, on the contrary if you paid more than the MSRP, they would expect you to put the value you paid as well.
I also never include service fees, or shipping charges, since those aren’t part of the value of the product.
So maybe I bought something on Amazon
The rest of 神呪のネクタール is still on the way and is one of the things I got from Yahoo Auctions…
Loot from Mercari/Rakuma.
Pleasantly surprised that most of the Hayate Gotoku not were only limited editions, but also brand new still wrapped.
The No Game No Life novels were also in superb condition.
A steal for 20EUR [1]
+Shipping ↩︎
Has anyone here ordered books from cdjapan before? I’m thinking about getting my next haul from there and was wondering if anyone could share what they thought about getting books from there or what it was like. I live in the UK so I’m not sure if there are differences getting books shipped to here versus other places, but I’d be curious to hear about the site regardless.
I’ve ordered from CDJapan many times before and have always been happy with the experience. Great packaging, a proxy service if you need to find something out-of-print, and shipping has been reasonable for my area.
Here’s some photos from my last shipment. Apart from shipping price (~5000円 for the package), I was very happy.
I’ve ordered from cdjapan to the UK a lot, with no problems (all new, books only). Their system can handle the fact that books are zero rated for VAT/duty these days too.
I’m from Canada and order from CD Japan a lot (also used their proxy service before). I’ve never had an issue with them. Everything is always extremely well packaged and arrives in perfect condition. It’s even better than when I buy (English) books domestically lol.
One thing to keep in mind though is that they don’t cover customs/HST up front like Amazon does so I’ve always had to pay like ~$20 more after I receive my package.
Maybe that’s Canada specific? Though for the UK there’s no duty to pay on books anyway so I have been fine both with and without ticking the “cdjapan pays duty up front” box as it’s (now) zero extra cost either way.
Lucky! But yeah if there are no extra fees in the UK I’d definitely go with CDJapan then. I’m usually willing to pay the extra taxes anyways since the one time I ordered from Amazon the packaging was bad and the books came slightly scuffed 
Not worth the $20 or so I saved.
The majority of my books have come from there (I’m in Scotland). Shipping is a bit higher priced now but still way cheaper than from Amazon UK or similar (I’ve had Japanese books from a local Waterstones and some of the second hand bookstores in Glasgow and Edinburgh.
Books have always come well wrapped and protected (so expect a lot of paper or bubble wrap padding). I usually go for the Fed Ex FICP for the shipping, cheapest that still gives insurance.
Taking my 2 most recent orders, one was 22,600 Yen of books + 9400 Yen shipping (32,000 yen = £148 for 26 books) and 26,000 Yen of books + 9100 Yen shipping (35,100 yen = £162 for 19 books). My understanding is the shipping is based on weight rather than over all price as the second order had some limited edition hard backs in it, whereas the first was just paperbacks.
I’ve only had to contact Support a few times, once for an additional shipping fee (order was upgraded to a higher shipping level because the price was around £250 after I had added several multiple volume sets so it had to be shipped in a bigger box), and when I’ve accidentally ordered an incorrect book but couldn’t cancel the order (they cancelled it for me), always had great customer service and I don’t think I’ve ever had any issues with damaged books or such from CD Japan.
Personally I would recommend them but I would also advise placing orders for multiple books to get the most out of your shipping costs, you can order up to 30 items in the one order (if listed as a set, it only counts as 1 item) and I have also used it for games and DVDs but those come with VAT which you can opt to pay with your order or to customs once it arrives in the UK. You also get points per order that you can use to get money of your next order and occasionally they have money off coupons or additional points up for grabs too.
